Films as Editor:

The Savage Eye
(Maddow, Meyers, and Strick);
Studs Lonigan
(Lerner);
The Sword and the Dragon
(English-language version of
Ilya Mourometz
) (Ptushko)

1963

An Affair of the Skin
(Maddow);
Cry of Battle
(Lerner) (supervisor)

1964

The Bus
(Wexler) (co)

1966

Country Boy
(Kane);
Deathwatch
(Morrow)

1967

The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle
(Couffer) (co);
Search for the Evil One
(Kane);
Track of Thunder
(Kane)

1968

The Wild Racers
(Haller) (co)

1969

Medium Cool
(Wexler)

1971

Point of Terror
(Nicol) (supervisor)

1972

What's Up, Doc?
(Bogdanovich)

1973

American Grafþti
(Lucas) (co);
Paper Moon
(Bogdanovich)

1974

Daisy Miller
(Bogdanovich);
The Sugarland Express
(Spielberg) (co)

1975

Jaws
(Spielberg)

Other Films:

1956

While the City Sleeps
(F. Lang) (sound ed)

1958

Snowfire
(D. & S. McGowan) (sound ed)

1961

El Cid
(A. Mann) (sound ed)

1963

The Balcony
(Strick) (sound ed);
A Face in the Rain
(Kershner) (sound ed)

1967

Targets
(Bogdanovich) (sound ed)

1968

Journey to the Pacific
(d)

1969

It's a Good Day
(d)

Publications

By FIELDS: articles—

American Film
(Washington, D.C.), June 1976.

Films and Filming
(London), February 1977.

Mise-en-Scène
(Cleveland, Ohio), Spring 1980.

"Working with Time: Verna Fields Prevails," an interview
with J. Padroff, in
Millimeter
, December 1980.

American Premiere
(Los Angeles, California), vol. 3, no. 5, 1982.

On FIELDS: articles—

Cinema
(Beverly Hills, California), no. 35, 1976.

Film Comment
(New York), March-April 1977.

Action
(Los Angeles, California), January-February 1978.

Slate, L., "Women & Film: One Year Later," in
American Premiere
, July 1982.

Obituary in
Variety
(New York), 8 December 1982.

* * *

Verna Fields became one of the American film industry's most famous
editors during the 1970s, and in the process was able to accumulate
considerable power. Since she had helped with so many blockbusters of the
decade, including
Jaws
and
American Graffiti
, Fields was promoted by a grateful Universal Pictures into the executive
suite. She held that vice-presidency until her death in 1982.

Unfortunately all this fame and power at the end of her long career only
served to remind close observers of the American film industry that like
in other multi-billion dollar institutions, few women ever accumulated a
measure of true power. However, since the beginnings of the film industry,
film editing had been one of the few arenas open to women. Fields, like
Margaret Booth before her (at MGM), used this opening to become a force at
a major Hollywood studio.

Indeed during the heyday of the "Movie Brats" of the 1970s,
many looked to Fields as a symbolic breakthrough. Here was a person who
had worked on many a low-budget independent film being elevated into a
real position of power. She was so "in" that in 1974
Newsweek
featured an article on her—one of the few in a popular magazine
about a film editor.

Verna Fields' father helped her move into the film industry.
Through him she met her husband Sam Fields, who was a film editor, in the
1940s. Sam died in 1954, leaving two sons to support. Verna returned to
work that year and learned her craft on television fare such as
The Lone Ranger
,
Wanted: Dead or Alive
,
Death Valley Days
, and
Sky King
. She made her big splash in Hollywood as the sound editor for
El Cid
.

But her greatest impact came when she began to teach film editing to a
generation of students at the University of Southern California.
She then operated on the fringes of the film business, for a time making
documentaries for the Office of Economic Opportunity. The end of that
Federal Agency pushed her back into mainstream Hollywood then being
overrun by her former USC students.

Cutting
What's Up, Doc?
for Peter Bogdanovich represented her return, but her real influence
began when she helped a former USC student, George Lucas, persuade
Universal to distribute
American Graffiti
. A grateful Lucas, the story goes, presented her with a brand new BMW
automobile in return.
Jaws
for Steven Spielberg "made" Fields' career.

She was quoted in the 1970s, at the height of her influence, saying that
she believed editing should be invisible. She sought to downplay her own
influence, preferring to let the director dictate the terms. Thus she
worked in a variety of projects equally well—from melodrama to
comedy to classic genre films. Certainly that is precisely what the new
young Hollywood generation liked about her. She was a great technician who
was sympathetic to their projects and visions. She wanted to help
them—unlike the rest of the Hollywood establishment of the day
which fought their very entry into the system. It is for this support that
Fields will long be remembered.

—Douglas Gomery

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